After winning 32 consecutive games of “Jeopardy!,” reigning champion James Holzhauer’s streak came to an end at the hands of Emma Boettcher.
The 27-year-old works as a user experience librarian in Chicago, Illinois. However, her real passion is “Jeopardy!” Not only was this Boettcher’s fourth time auditioning to be on the show, but she’s also written an academic paper on the game.
While she’ll forever be known as the woman that dethroned one of the game’s fiercest competitors, the “Jeopardy!” superfan did not set out with the intention of ending Holzhauer’s streak. She just wanted to be a competitive contestant.
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“As far as preparation, I looked up some tutorials online about how to wager, especially for 'Final Jeopardy,'” Boettcher told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “But I also knew that a large part of the game for me was the mental aspect, keeping focused while being on the set of my favorite TV show.”
'Jeopardy' contestant Emma Boettcher dethroned James Holzhauer's winning-streak. ('Jeopardy!')
According to outlet, she auditioned for the show four times before making it, starting in 2010 when she was a senior in high school. While at Princeton University, she reportedly began to keep track of what clues she would get right and wrong at home in order to collect data on her own performance should she ever make it on the show.
In addition to practicing the game, Boettcher revealed to Vulture that she also wrote an academic paper on 'Jeopardy!' while obtaining her master’s degree in information sciences.
“The question I started out with was, ‘How do people perceive what’s difficult, and how can we train a computer to make those same types of predictions?’ The ‘Jeopardy!’ board values its clues going from top to bottom. I was parsing the text of those clues for length, the words used in each, the syntax, and whether or not they linked out to audiovisual materials. I gave all of that information to a machine learning tool and said, ‘If I gave someone just words, is it better than giving someone just length?’ ‘If I gave someone just audiovisuals, would that be better than having no information at all?’”
'Jeopardy!' champion James Holzhauer ended his winning-streak with $2,462,216 in total earnings. ("Jeopardy!")
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Despite losing, Holzhauer remained competitive with Boettcher's score until the "Final Jeopardy!" round. The 34-year-old professional gambler correctly responded to the question, but as host Alex Trebek pointed out, he made a conservative wager, betting only $1,399 of his $23,400, finishing the game with $24,799.
Boettcher, however, also responded correctly and wagered $20,201 of her $26,600, giving her a total of $46,801.
In an act of sportsmanship, Holzhauer immediately went to Boettcher’s podium to give her a congratulatory high-five.
“Emma dominated her warmup games that day, and I knew she would make an extremely tough challenger,” Holzhauer said in a press release. “I was still incredibly impressed by her courage on that ‘True Daily Double.’ I’m proud that it took a top-level player at her absolute best to eliminate me.”
The loss brings an end to speculation that Holzhauer would topple current reigning “Jeopardy!” champion Ken Jennings.
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“I never really believed I could win 75 shows, but I definitely thought I had a great shot at Ken’s cash winnings record,” said Holzhauer, who finished just $58,484 shy of Jennings’ total with $2,464,216.
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